Are you adding a trailing / at the end of the link? That usually works for me.
I know it’s all preliminary, yet if this kind of “flipped the wrong switch” is so possible (and I believe up-thread it was said to be similar in Airbus’) that is just terrible.
I don’t expect my bathroom mirror to tell me about shaving with toothpaste or my fridge to ask “what’s the deal with putting cereal in me”. As for me, tell me I’m not the only person to ever leave some aluminum foil on a dish I put in the microwave till I see sparks flying.
But again, as I reckon the only “fix” available for what I see as an ergonomic design flaw is to replace every cockpit, at least make the computer aware that this makes no sense and disallow the pilot(s) to do it.
I don’t think this accident was caused by a flap selection error. The YouTubers putting it forward are presumably unaware of the evidence that the RAT had deployed. The RAT is not a consequence of selecting the flaps up inadvertently.
Thank you for that. I wasn’t aware of it and knowing it makes me feel good…on a day where any little bit of good news (albeit not “new”) is greatly appreciated!
With regards to the confusion about the only survivor being found multiple places, just remember the phrase (often attributed to the Washington Post), “Daily news is the first rough draft of history”. Time will sort this out.
With regards to Spiderman’s concern about insufficient bandwidth to transmit black-box-type of data to the cloud in real time, that concern has been raised often. It would have been more important 10 years ago, but with technological improvement over time – expected to continue – transmission speed, bandwidth, and storage capacity is far less important now. Besides, programming the communications control to reduce the amount of data when appropriate is a trivial task.
Safety automation sounds great until you’re in a 737 Max and the computer decides that the silly human is accidentally pointing the nose up and helpfully slams the plane into the ground. Lots of crashes have been automated, software is not infallible.
Someone on NPR last night speculated that the survivor’s seat was thrown clear of the plane on impact, before the explosion. That would explain his being stunned and having no idea what happened, as well as his being the only survivor.
(They also talked a lot about how rare it is to have a tiny number of survivors. Usually, it’s almost everyone who can still walk after impact, or no one.)
I also don’t think the flaps were retracted. A (purported) 787 pilot over at a pilot board noted that fully retracting the flaps would have required passing through a significant interlock/detent that would be hard to unconsciously do. And at the airspeed the plane was at, there was another safety that wouldn’t have the full retraction of, um, something in the flap/slat system (it’s a long thread and I can’t find the post from last night.). In any case, he said that in the least flap deployment that could be inadvertently selected, the plane would only have slowed climbing, and we would have heard significantly more engine noise.
RAT deployment definitely speaks against a flap error, but… suppose they inadvertently retracted the flaps, the plane starts sinking, and someone panics and deploys the RAT?
All this happened so fast. You accidentally retract the flaps and the plane starts stalling and falling to earth and you pull back on the controls and it doesn’t make you climb and you’re like “WTF WTF” fuck MAYDAY MAYDAY and deploy the RAT because in your terror you think maybe the engines are failing. And then you’re dead and can’t tell anyone what you did.
I don’t buy that we can tell much from the sound in the cell phone video.
One expert, speculating, said that if they entered a drastically, incorrectly low takeoff weight into the flight computer, the computer would suggest a “derated” takeoff (like TO-2) that would cause the takeoff thrust to be less than needed (which would be correct with a much lighter payload).
That theory doesn’t mesh with the ram generator deployment, though.
It does seem odd to me that they used the whole runway before rotate. It doesn’t seem safe to me to have V1 so far down the runway.
I know this was a fully loaded plane, but it wasn’t Aerosucre either - plenty of thrust and margin to have a V1 that allows for a safe abort before the end of the runway.
I compared this crash to the Northwest Flight 255 crash upthread before I heard there was a sole survivor. That happened 25 miles away from where I lived at the time. This is bringing up some grim memories for me.
RAT deployment is either automatic upon loss of electrical and/or hydraulic power (which would occur with a double engine failure) or manual deployment via a switch on the overhead panel, which is located nowhere near the flap and gear levers. I can’t see how anyone would manually deploy it as a panic response to accidentally retracting flaps too soon (which, as far as I can tell, is not what happened).
I believe the 787 is known for having a fairly long takeoff roll (8,000 to 9,000ft). The temp at the time of departure was 41C which would increase the density altitude and increase the required takeoff distance. All of this is factored into the flight computer prior to departure anyways and the plane figures out what performance is required and what/where V1 will be for that runway on takeoff.
No it isn’t, because there’s nothing trivial in aircraft certification!
(I agree with you, it’s not a difficult concept, but it would surprise you how long such a thing would take to program. And would have to be custom for every aircraft variant and avionics configuration, and approved for each variant, etc. Not trivial in the application of the concept).
My information (which I can’t guarantee is correct) is that a fully loaded B787 requires something like 9,000 feet of runway to take off and the runway in question was 11,000 feet long, which only leaves about 2,000 feet of pavement unused. Higher than standard temp means a few hundred more feet of required runway. So yeah, they used almost all the runway to take off. That’s actually not that unusual in commercial aviation. A lot of modern passenger airplanes are big, bigger than they were when a lot of busy airports were originally laid out and constructed.